


Now I Only Waste It Dreaming of You

by Flames_and_Jade



Series: Only One For Me - Peterick OTP Prompts Repository [14]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: (for now) - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Bingo, Embarrassing Childhood Stories, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, No Smut, Visiting grandma, crabby Nana, cuteness, nursing homes, the boys love their grandmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 15:50:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13814433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flames_and_Jade/pseuds/Flames_and_Jade
Summary: Pete loves his Grams, okay? She's kinda his favorite person, she's his partner-in-crime and confidant. So when Nana has to move into the full-assistance wing of the Senior Living home...he meets her new roommate. Nana Stumph...and her grandson.





	Now I Only Waste It Dreaming of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PlatinumAndPercocet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlatinumAndPercocet/gifts).



> HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY MY LOVELY FRIEND!!!! This fic is for the lovely PlatinumandPercocet...and it's two days late...forgive me? But I wanted to write you something to say thank you for being the most endlessly kind, wonderful reader and friend ever. I love you, and you're the greatest ever! There's no smut...I *may* be convinced to at *some* point write a part 2...but my endless list of WIP's is spiraling out of control right now! But happy belated birthday, my lovely lady! You're amazing!

 

 

Call him childish, or juvenile, or pathetic, or whatever adjective you wanted...but Pete Wentz loved his Grams. 

 

She was the last hallmark of a tempestuous childhood and he was a sentimental son-of-a-bitch, after all. She was the one he would run to when the neighborhood kids made fun of him for his hair curling, teasing that if they cut him open maybe his blood was black instead of red like theirs. He would barrel past the living room that smelled of his grandfather’s vanilla pipe tobacco and into the safety of her arms. It wasn’t that there weren’t others in his life that weren’t just as understanding, or compassionate...his mother, his cousins, his best friend. But Grams just had that...indescribable air of  _ it’s going to be okay. _ She would gather him close and soothe away the heartbreak and the pain, but she never tried to downplay the injustices of his childhood, even when they maybe weren’t that bad. Sometimes he’d run to her because he really  _ did _ suck at skateboarding...but she’d listen and comfort just the same. A gem, his Grams.

 

But when his grandfather had passed on, she had leaned on his shoulder at his funeral with her black fascinator pinned precisely over her right brow and looked as majestic as the Queen of England. He had helped her pack up her remaining belongings and driven her to the senior living community that they had picked out months before, and settled her into the small one-bedroom apartment. That had been where he’d gone for most of his early twenties—parking whatever beater of a junker he was schlepping around in next to the residents’ golf carts and climbing the five steps to her apartment. She would listen—as always—to his heartbreak when Jeanae broke up with him, when college was way harder than he thought it would be, when he had been kicked out of _yet_ _another_ band. She would make him tea from the little hot-pot she kept in the tiny kitchen and he would pour his heart out. She was his best friend, his confidant, his secret weapon he liked to joke. She would just shake her head and say all he needed was someone who believed in him. 

 

~//~

 

“Nana,  _ please.”  _ Patrick wiped his hand across his face and let out an exasperated sigh. “You can’t throw things at the nurses—you’re going to get in trouble.” 

 

“It was just a washcloth! Nobody’s ever died from impact with a towel last time I checked!” She glared as he shook his head and bent down for her to wrap her arm around his neck. Out of long practice, he moved her easily to her wheelchair, settling her legs comfortably on the footrests before fastening the straps across. 

 

“Which blanket do you want?” He asked as he slid on her slippers and she considered the tower of crocheted, quilted, tied, and knitted blankets on the windowsill. 

 

“The blue chenille one your sister gave me for Christmas. It’s my favorite and I don’t want whoever my new roommate is to steal it.” 

 

“I’m sure that wouldn’t happen.” He rolled his eyes as he took the blanket from nearly the bottom of the stack. “Besides, where would they take it? It’s not like anybody in this wing can run away.” She grumbled and he just ignored her with a fond smile, tucking the blanket around her stroke-wasted legs and standing. “Alright...where to? We have so many options.” 

 

Nana Stumph rolled her eyes right back at him and he couldn’t help but chuckle at the real live reminder of where he got it from. “How about the garden. I could use some fresh air.” 

 

Patrick nodded and took up his place behind her chair, pushing her towards the door like he did every Saturday morning and Wednesday night. “It’s raining, you know.” He informed her as he paused to grab her windbreaker from the hook.

 

“More the better.” 

 

~//~

 

Wednesday was a stormy, angry Chicago Autumn day as the season turned with a vengeance. Pete slicked water from his jacket as he entered the wing and shook himself like a dog, nose wrinkling like it always did at the smell. The first thing he’d realized when they moved Grams to this wing last week after her surgery was that it smelled of  _ hospital _ . So different than the brown sugar and lavender smell he’d always associated with her. 

 

He turned the corner, winding down hallways he was trying valiantly to remember how to navigate and found the room he was looking for—553 West. 

 

“Nana, I’m sure she’s a lovely person. Just because she’s  _ new  _ doesn’t mean she’s  _ bad. _ ” A voice floated out from the door and he held back a grimace. The room had been blissfully empty on Saturday when they had moved Grams in, but clearly that was just a temporary blessing. He wished for the thousandth time to be a millionaire so he could live in a mansion with a live-in nurse and a whole bottom floor just for her.

 

The fantasy blinked off in his mind as he stepped into the room and locked gazes with an apologetic set of eyes looking at him from beneath black-rimmed glasses. Ridiculously-plush lips quirked into a smile as the guy stood and held out his hand.

 

“Umm...hi. I’m Patrick, this is my Nana. We’re very—“

 

“If you say  _ pleased to meet you _ , Patrick, I’ll beat you with my cane, because I’m  _ not _ pleased to meet him.” The room’s  _ other _ occupant that  _ wasn’t  _ his Grams glared at him from under thinning white hair, settled in the bed like a queen under a pile of blankets and pillowcases printed with  _ interesting  _ fabric. The frankly  _ gorgeous  _ guy shook his head and rolled his eyes as Pete remembered his manners and took his hand for a manly shake. 

 

“Uh. Pete...my Grams is—“

 

“The supposed interloper my Nana has apparently decided to hate.” Patrick finished with a wry grin. “Let me just sincerely apologize to you both now...she’s very  _ opinionated _ .”

 

“Nothing’s wrong with my hearing, young man. My ears were wholly unaffected in my stroke,  _ thank you very much.”  _

 

Pete shook his head and shrugged. “No worries. Pretty sure Grams could have out-nice’d Hitler, so I’m sure she’ll win her over.” A heartbeat of Patrick’s eyes widening and he realized what he’d said, that he’d  _ actually _ compared this stupidly, ridiculously and unfairly hot guy’s grandmother to the world’s most infamous mass-murderer. “I didn’t mean it like that, shit I’m sorry, I—“

 

But then Patrick was letting out a loud laugh, bending down and slapping his knee like an old man as he headed back to his unimpressed Nana. 

 

“Let’s hope for both our sake’s you’re right.” He pulled a well-loved wheelchair from the corner and gave Pete a wink. “Well, we’ll leave you in peace. It’s bingo night down in the Rec Room—I gotta take back my rightful place. She beat me last week, just can’t have that.” 

 

Pete just nodded, circling around the curtain to where Grams was looking at him with knowing eyes and a smug smile. He gesticulated wildly but silently at the other side of the curtain and she nodded—his wordless communication of  _ holy shit she’s a grumpy old thing but he is hot as can be and I think I love him but did you just hear me put my foot in my mouth!?!?!?!?  _ was understood perfectly. She just sighed and he sat down on the chair next to her bed, burying his burning face in the hospital blankets next to her hip and groaning. 

 

~//~

  
  


_ There’s nothing for it, _ Patrick decided as he fiddled with the hem of his cardigan.  _ If  _ Pete showed up tonight—and there was no guarantee as he seemed to have no rhyme or reason to when he visited—he was going to do it. Some surreptitious discussion with Grams Wentz when Nana was wheeled out for therapy had given him sufficient information to hope his advances wouldn't be immediately rejected. Grams had told him that yes, Pete was single...and yes, he was interested in both men and women, and that he actually quite liked music. Patrick had been on pins and needles all week, chattering animatedly to his best friend Joe about whether or not it was  _ entirely _ too weird to ask out the grandson of his Nana’s roommate. 

 

So when he heard the telltale squeak of battered converse sneakers against the linoleum, his heart  _ definitely _ skipped a beat. Nana was almost asleep, worn out from the evening where he had finally taken back the title of Reigning Bingo Champion, her gnarled hand twisted into his as he read to her from  _ Cloud Atlas _ . He smiled at Pete when he entered the room, not breaking the cadence of his oratory out of sheer will as he nodded with a returned smile before vanishing behind the curtain. 

 

Fifteen minutes later, Nana’s hand was slack in his own and he settled the worn book on the nightstand next to her thick glasses—another Stumph trait he had been blessed to inherit—and slunk silently from the room...but didn’t leave the home. Instead, he took up residence in the threesome of chairs across the hall from 553 West and tried valiantly not to throw up. 

 

He was just about to call it quits, because he’d both run out of lives on Candy Crush and had also run through his reserves of courage, when movement caught his eye. Pete was shrugging on his jacket as he left the room and Patrick shot to his feet, dropping his phone in his haste. It  _ smacked _ onto the ground resoundingly, the noise echoing in the late-evening stillness of the hallway and Pete’s shocked eyes met his own. 

 

“Uhh...good thing I got one of those Otterboxes, huh?” He choked out as he bent to pick it up as Pete walked closer. 

 

“Definitely.” Pete was standing in front of him now, and Patrick could feel an asthma attack coming on.  _ Just do it, you fucking idiot _ , he told himself sternly.

 

“Would you uh...I don’t know if you’d want to but…I was thinking…” Words seemed to whirl around his head and fall into sentences that didn’t actually say what he meant to... _ why was this so hard? _

 

“Let me help you out—want to get coffee after coming here Saturday?” Pete gave him a wry grin and Patrick could feel his own jaw dropping open. 

 

“How did you—“

 

“You really think Grams wouldn’t tell me?” He rolled his eyes. “C’mon dude. She’s like...the Watson to my Sherlock.” He was still staring as Pete took his phone from his hand, pressed _Patrick’s_ _own thumb_ to the home button of his phone to unlock it, and then tapped in his phone number, calling himself so he had it as well. Eyes the color of whiskey and the fragrant earth in his Nana’s vegetable garden smiled at him as Pete leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek before walking away with a chuckle. 

 

Patrick was still standing in the hallway wondering  _ what the fuck just happened  _ when his phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down to see someone had texted him...and the contact info was listed as “Pete Wentz Who Likes Coffee” with several hearts and kiss-faced emojis after it. 

 

<< _ So is tht a yes 2 Sat?>> _ The text read, and Patrick realized he hadn’t actually given an answer. With sweaty, trembling thumbs he opened the phone and tapped at the screen.

 

< _ Absolutely...how about we make it lunch? Noon at Ivy’s?> _

 

_ <<perfect>> _

 

_ ~//~ _

  
  


Pete was giving Patrick a look across the bingo table, because  _ hello _ . He was  _ hot _ , a fact that he told him as often as possible, even when he was being berated by Nana Stump for his  _ young whippersnapper silliness _ . He tucked the blanket more securely around Grams lap, and Patrick caught the gentle smile he gave her. He had been ecstatic that she was recovering so well from her hip surgery to leave her bed, much to the chagrin of his own Nana...and then he tuned back into the complaining coming from his family member.

 

“--believe you’d bring  _ strangers _ to our Bingo game, Patrick! This is  _ our _ night, we--”

 

“They’re hardly strangers, Nana.” He chuckled as he locked down the breaks on her wheelchair, throwing Pete a wink over her back. “Mrs. Wentz  _ lives with you _ .” 

 

“Only because I was the only soul kindly enough to take her in.” Nana Stump groused as he took his seat next to her, spreading out the cards so she could take one and handing her the pink dotter to mark her numbers. He only snorted at her statement, taking a card and an orange dotter and giving Pete a look across the table. 

 

“You’re both going down. Team Stump is unbeatable.” He tried to sound like a Bond Villain, but judging by the laughter in Pete’s gaze, he wasn’t doing very well. They played three rounds--Nana winning the first two, even though he wondered if that was by intentional design of the other half of the table’s occupants, which put her in a considerably better mood. During a brief break while the bingo-balls were collected and re-deposited in the canister, Pete turned plaintive eyes to his Nana, and turned the charm on. 

 

“Mrs. Stumph, Patrick won’t tell me any stories about when he was little. I’ve told him  _ all  _ about my escapades and I’m feeling pretty gypped.” He gave her a smile Patrick had become intimately familiar with in the last three months--it usually ended in Pete getting his way. 

 

“Oh Lord...Patrick was a strange little one.” Mrs. Stumph cackled as she blotted a pattern on the back of her losing bingo card. “Should have seen him, scrawny little thing. He used to come home from school all banged up by the bullies, but never a complaint came out of his mouth. He’d just help me in the vegetable garden ‘till the sun went down, humming the whole time and then he’d ask if we could watch Jeopardy--”

 

“--Wait, is  _ that _ where he got all his trivia??” Pete interrupted with an excited look and wild hand-gestures. “I swear, he knows more random facts than  _ anyone _ .” 

 

“Oh yes.” Nana Stumph patted Patrick’s shoulder with a proud smile, even though Patrick felt like  _ his  _ face was about to burst into flames. “A smart one from the beginning, my Patty.” 

 

“Yes,  _ thank you _ .” Patrick tried to interject, but she was having none of it. 

 

“Around fourth grade I decided I’d had enough of him looking sad. So one morning I told his mother that I’d take him to school in the morning--he was the only one left in middle school, you see. So I dropped him off in his Grandaddy’s big old red Ford. He was halfway into school when I yelled for him to come back and get his lunch bag--he was always forgetting it--and I had pulled out the old Remington. Scared the stuffing out of the bullies, I did. He grabbed his lunch bag and ran away, but nobody bothered him after that.” 

 

Patrick had his face buried in his hands now, looking up at Pete’s slack-jawed expression of joy and Grams bemused tolerance, and decided to just run away and leave her. It could be forgiven. 

 

“Didn’t realize you Stumphs were such gun people.” Pete oozed out interest laced liberally with a tease that Patrick was fairly certain only he could distinguish. He buried his face again and prayed for the caller to start Bingo back again. 

 

“Only out on his Granddaddy’s farm.” Nana’s eyebrows rose in gleeful remembrance. “I remember once, I was driving back from picking him up and there was a big old snake in the road. He cried like a little girl but I shot it and threw it in the back.” 

 

“You  _ cried _ ?!” Pete crowed and Patrick decided this had gone far enough. He was perfectly okay with Nana returning to her previous state of hating the Wentz’s. All of them. 

 

“I was a kid, and it was huge!! Plus, I don’t like snakes, you know that!” He tried vainly to defend himself but Nana’s smug grin said otherwise, and he could tell who Pete was believing. 

 

“That’s not what he said when he ate the soup I made with the meat.” 

 

Now it was Pete’s turn to have his eyes bulge out of his head. “You  _ ate the snake!?”  _

 

“I didn’t know!” He protested, wondering if the nursing home would mind if  _ he  _ went up and called the bingo, just to escape. “She’d had it in the freezer for  _ months-- _ I’d forgotten all about it until one night there I was eating soup and she casually throws out there I was eating the snake from the road!” 

 

Pete burst out laughing, disturbing the serenity of several of the home’s other denizens who had already drifted to sleep during the wait, and Grams Wentz chuckled in a dignified manner. “That’s a handy trick. I never could quite fool my Pete into eating his vegetables.” 

 

“Hey!” Pete protested, but  _ finally _ the announcer began to call out numbers and Bingo rolled onwards. They played three more hands until there were no cards left and it was time to return their beloved matrons back to their room. Blankets were tucked and orders issued...but then they walked hand from hand out the door to Pete’s waiting car. 

 

“Hope there’s no snake in the road. I didn’t bring my shotgun.” Pete snarked and he just sighed, sliding down in his seat and folding his arms. 

 

“Just drive, asshole.” Patrick glared, mind already drifting to all the things he intended to do  _ to  _ Pete and  _ with _ Pete, and he couldn’t help but smile in anticipation. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> From the following OTP Prompt: "Our grandparents are in the same nursing home and they hate each other AU," from the blog [Daily AU](http://dailyau.tumblr.com/post/159186987225/our-grandparents-are-in-the-same-nursing-home-and)
> 
> Title from Fall Out Boy's song "Of All the Gin Joints in all the World" from the album "From Under the Cork Tree."


End file.
